Random Weekend Activity

After the excitement of the first week back in front of the classroom (never mind the flood of administrative bits-and-pieces), I headed over to Vancouver for the weekend. Pater had also had a challenging week so Thursday night’s exertion was limited to watching an episode of Dexter, Season 3 (have you watched this show? — fun and gruesome, all at once!).

Friday I checked out some shops, picked up some dress shirts and ties for my two guys (Guy the Younger, our son, has just gone back to complete his B.Comm, which requires some business wear, hard to manage on a student budget). I love menswear shopping where the focus — at least for dress shirts and ties — is on mixing-and-matching patterns and colours without having to worry about whether they make anyone’s butt look big.

Pater met me at the end of the day to check out a sports jacket I’d found for him, on sale at The Bay, and then we wandered up Granville Street together admiring the vista it offers now down its newly wide, clean streets with the new Canada Line rapid-transit all tucked away beneath. When I was young, this street was still in the waning days of its glory as Theatre Row, and my good friend Margie and I used to feel ever-so-sophisticated meeting at The Birks clock and then heading to Scott’s for lunch. In our twenties, we used to pick up gorgeous pastries at the konditorei (The Mozart?) at Granville and, maybe, Robson. Then in the last ten years, my main Granville forays have been for visits to David Gordon’s and to Fluevog’s. But the street’s been creeping back to life over the past five or so years (with “creeping” the operative word down at the bridge end where some of the sleazier windows still offered sad men coin-operated peep-shows).

There are a number of new eating places popping up among the Granville nightclubs, and we checked out one we’ve had an eye one — The Twisted Fork Bistro. Before 7, they offer a 3-course, $25-per-person prix fixe menu — great value, yummy food, and a warm, friendly vibe with dramatic but casual decor and an open kitchen. The highlight of both our meals was the dessert — Pater had a gorgeous lemon tart — tart enough, full-flavoured, and accompanied by house-made sour cream ice cream tucked into a large wedge of candied lemon rind. I got a bite of it by trading him one of my profiteroles filled with house-made hazelnut ice cream drizzled with chocolate. Yumm!

Other weekend highlights include the barbeque my sister and BIL hosted in their backyard where I got to catch up once again with my family, including a few who have missed recent events — it’s been a great summer for family!

And we spent several hours with our little Nola, even taking her to the park on our own. Still can’t believe I forgot my camera, but in a way I enjoyed letting go of the need to record and instead just revelled in her company. She’s having fun making a UH-Huh sound and checking out how people respond to it — precious! Oh, and she’s making like a commando, crawling for all the no-nos in the apartment. Her parents’ life is about to change drastically yet again . . .